


Hold On

by hystericalwomannovelist



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-01
Updated: 2013-09-01
Packaged: 2017-12-25 07:54:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/950606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hystericalwomannovelist/pseuds/hystericalwomannovelist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He cannot live without her. So he does not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold On

He looks up from the book he is reading and sees her coming toward him, slowly with an exaggerated movement of her hips, smiling mischievously. She is wearing the red dress this time. He sets down his drink, closes the book. He has been waiting for her. He is always waiting for her.

He settles back in his chair, grinning at her smugly, pulls the cord of the lamp so that there is nothing to see but Laura. 

“Missed you,” he says softly, as he does every time. It is a private joke, but it stabs.

“I haven't been gone long,” she laughs. Laughs at him. Laughs because she is happy.

“I know. I always miss you.”

She reaches him finally, threads the fingers of her hands through his, palms touching lightly. She knees his legs apart gently and he complies. She stands before him, something sad in her eyes and her smile now. “I love you, Bill.”

He never gets tired of hearing it now, no matter how carefree she becomes with the words. She is more free now than he has ever known her to be and it is contagious, when she is here.

It is worse, worse all the time, when she goes.

She unclasps her hands from his and moves them to cup his face, slowly bringing her lips to his where they rest, softly, less a kiss at first than an exchange of breath, of life. It is a reminder. This. This is home.

He cannot hold the moment forever, much as he would like to. He is surrounded by her now and he wants her, he pulls her to him and she falls easily into his lap, sitting back on her heels, one leg on either side of his.

“Thank gods for you, Laura,” he whispers before kissing her hard, his tongue seeking out hers, and he can feel her smiling against him. She is laughing at him again, at this profession of faith, so unlike him, until recently. Yes, she made him believe. But it is more than that, and he is not sure she knows. The gods are the only thing keeping them together now, and if he cannot believe in that he will lose her forever. What's more, he will know he is mad.

She responds in kind as she always does, always meeting him, always matching him; as much as he feels he is trailing in her wake, she does follow where he leads, too. They dance, they fight, they stand side-by-side, just as they always have done. He does not know why it still surprises him. Because it is such a gift, and unearned, he thinks, except by some miracle that she wants to give it. Because it is too good to be true.

He pulls her tight against him, blocking out those thoughts, wanting only the feel of Laura, the taste of her, the little sounds she makes, as long as she can spare to be with him. He most certainly does not want to _think_ right now. Without consciously remembering doing it, her skirt is now bunched around her waist and she is pushing hard against him and he moans into her mouth. Yes, he had missed this.

“Don't go,” he breathes, holding her still tighter to him, needing her closer, seized by a sudden panic that she will go – she always does. He does not want to hurt her, but he cannot let her go. _Sine qua non, without which not. You are my love, my life, my everything, stay..._

“I won't go,” she says, but she is not laughing this time. He breaks away just long enough to see her trying to hide the same panic he feels. She closes the distance between their lips again, throwing her arms around his neck. A moment too late.

He closes his eyes and drowns in her kisses, his breath ragged and raspy when he can catch it. Perhaps it is selfish and wrong to need this so much, as it was when they began. Sometimes – now – he does not know any more than he cares. He only knows he cannot not live without her. So he does not.

He rises in one motion with a strength he did not know he still has, her legs wrapped around his waist, allowing him to carry her wherever he likes. She smiles for him again, that beaming smile that lights up her whole face, and then she lowers her head to kiss him again, a succession of hard, quick kisses that seem to say _Don't be sad. Not now. I'm here. Don't be sad ever. I'm always here._

He carries her to the bed, a proper bed he has built for them after the times spent in racks and cots and blankets in the grass beside a stream and once bent over her desk and wherever he could have her. He has built a bed for her and a home for her, the simple things he had wanted to give her for longer than he ever confessed to her, where he can make love to her the way she deserves. She would laugh at him again and say, slyly, that it was always good, no matter where. It was always good, but she deserved better.

They are naked in what feels like an instant and he lays her down on the bed like a queen; she sprawls across it like a queen, to please him, and it does. He joins her, never feeling like a king except in her eyes but he believes it, he believes it now. She could make him believe anything when she looks at him that way.

He wants this to go on forever but he needs to be inside of her and she is ready and welcoming and she pulls him to her, pulls him as far as he can go. He wants to go farther, wants to be really with her, really inside of her, wants to fit his entire self into her somehow and let her take him home. He buries his cock inside her in one movement and cries out; it is such a shallow approximation of what he really needs. Her. He needs her, all of her, here in his bed and in his blood and in the stars and he needs to not know that she is here and yet not here and he needs another drink to forget it and he needs– 

“I love you.” She says it again, this time her voice low and straining with pleasure and she pulls him back, back to her, back to the here and now. He relaxes again. 

It is never perfect; it is always good.

He moves within her and can feel the slow build begin, tries to hold it, keep it. For the moment, orgasm is the furthest thing from his mind. Dimly he knows there will come a point when the madness overtakes him all at once and he will lose his purpose, lost and desperate in his need, he will give in. But for now if he is lost he is lost in Laura, the solid warmth of her, kissing her languidly, hands moving over every inch of her, slow, thoughtless movements of hips carrying them along. 

They had never had the time to make love unhurriedly, to enjoy one another this way. On New Caprica when it began they had seen each other too infrequently, tearing into one another with finally acknowledged lust every time. Later on the Galactica it was rare and rushed and furtive, and in their last days together he was always too aware of the end, of her frailty, of how she was just a little less _there_ every time. He noticed, of course he noticed, although she was always beautiful to him, although impossibly he loved her more and more every day. His love grew even as her life, his life, slipped further and further away.

She is slipping, she is slipping now. “No,” he growls,defiant, it is much too soon; they were cursed with too little time but surely they have earned this much, surely the gods owe them this much. “No,” he kisses her harder, as if he can keep her here if he just embraces her tightly enough, and he is driving into her now, not the way he wants it at all but he needs it, needs her, doesn't know how else to hold on.

He is close and he is bringing about the end and he does not know how to stop.

She is far, far from him and she opens her mouth to speak and he cannot hear her now. He wants to stop, stop everything, take it all back, start again. He wants to keep her here or go with her wherever she goes and he does not care which anymore, it's all the same, he will accept any terms under which they can be together and he knows this; he wishes he had known it sooner.

He is thrusting with a frenzy he knows, hazily, he could never feel if she were really here and suddenly it is all so meaningless and empty and he comes. He knows she is gone. 

He rolls onto his side, breath shaky and wheezing, trembling fingers reaching out for the glass that was never far from reach and drinks deeply. She is gone, their duty is over, and for some terrible, cruel reason he is still here.

_I don't have much time,_ he had told Lee. He prays to the gods it's true, now.

 

~~~

 

Laura watches over him, her heart – it is only an expression now, _her heart_ – breaking in concern and love. She is not sure she isn't making this harder on him, but she does not go. 

She kneels beside her love, weeping, broken, splayed on a mattress in the tall grass, a half-empty bottle of amber liquid at his side. There is no bed; there is no chair. He is not strong. There is only the same book he has read over and over again. Sometimes he knows this. Sometimes he believes he has built a log cabin with his own two hands. 

She hesitates just short of touching him. She thinks about going away, letting him be until he joins her. But there is nothing for her here. She is not sure what it means, but she has not really left him, she believes she cannot really leave him, and it is unclear to her whether that is her punishment or a gift, if it is the gods' will or their connection keeping her here. And she does not go because she is not certain he will join her. When he dies she does not know if they will be together, somehow, or if he will be as alone as she is. Punishment or a gift. She does not know.

She knows he wishes for the end. Whatever that may be, she tells herself it will be better for him. He is ill and slowly losing touch with reality. There is no one here to help him. He never let her go, and it is breaking him more in the wake of her death than it ever did in life. 

It won't be long. 

Giving in, she lies down beside him, her chest to his back. She can almost feel the familiar pressure of their bodies touching, the warmth of his skin, still so alive. Almost. She likes to think he knows when she is really there, on some level. She likes to think it doesn't terrorize him as some of his fantasies do, that it might feel like a cooling soft breeze. But she reasons with herself, of course he cannot feel her. 

He thinks he does, but he is going mad. Or perhaps they are connected. Perhaps it is all the same.

“I'm here, Bill. I'm here.” She tries to whisper in his ear, remembering more than feeling his hair against her cheek. “I've never left you. I won't.” 

His body goes rigid for a moment as if reacting, as if he knows. Then he relaxes, the tears stop, and eventually sleep takes him.

Perhaps he knows. Perhaps he does not.

Perhaps she helps him. Perhaps she is his downfall.

They were the same questions she ignored in life.

Either way, she is powerless.

She drapes one arm across his body, laying her hand over his, willing him peace, any way he can find it. He seems to sleep soundly, and for that she is grateful. Either way, she loves him; she knows that much, too. Either way, she will hold on.


End file.
